Monday, November 01, 2010

Project 365 (303/365): November Is The Supernatural Month

.:303/365: November Is The Supernatural Month:.

Whether or not you believe in it, there have been more than enough stories about the supernatural to tide us all over for the rest of our natural lives. It permeates the very core of our being when we hear an exceptionally scary story, and we don’t quite know how to make heads or tails of it, but it’s like ice cubes running in our backs: the feeling is eerie, and it’s impossible to shake off.

As a skeptic, I’ve never been a huge believer in the supernatural, even if some of my experiences appear to point towards it. Whether it was that infamous séance I conducted two years ago, or the uncanny coincidences that have occurred around me, I’ve always just attributed them to just that: coincidences, and freaks of chance. I’m willing to suspend disbelief when watching a performance, sure, but for me to suspend my disbelief when someone offers to contact my dead relatives for me? That’s quite a stretch.

Regardless of whether or not you believe in the supernatural, there are countless things that we still don’t understand in this world, and that’s a given. This uncertainty, this inexplicability, is precisely the charm and conceit of magic: we can’t explain something magical, thereby, it’s amazing how our eyes are fooled, or how someone plays voodoo with our mind in that manner. Magic has always played up on this uncertainty, and in the context of a magic act, they wouldn’t shy away from toying with the audience’s imaginations through the immense resources they have at hand.

This month attempts to chronicle some of the more impressive bits of the supernatural in the context of magic. Whether it be a magic act that uses ghosts, geek or fakir, bizarre, or even phenomenon often associated with magic, I’ll try to discuss them here, whether at length or in brief, as is my always mercurial tendencies when it comes to this Project 365. Hopefully, this month will prove to be interesting to magic fans all over.